Common Folk Using Common Sense

Found at the Washington Post:

Bluntly put, this is the political reality:

First, the battle for public opinion has been lost. Comprehensive health care has been lost. If it fails, as appears possible, Democrats will face the brunt of the electorate’s reaction. If it passes, however, Democrats will face a far greater calamitous reaction at the polls. Wishing, praying or pretending will not change these outcomes.

Nothing has been more disconcerting than to watch Democratic politicians and their media supporters deceive themselves into believing that the public favors the Democrats’ current health-care plan. Yes, most Americans believe, as we do, that real health-care reform is needed. And yes, certain proposals in the plan are supported by the public.

However, a solid majority of Americans opposes the massive health-reform plan. Four-fifths of those who oppose the plan strongly oppose it, according to Rasmussen polling this week, while only half of those who support the plan do so strongly. Many more Americans believe the legislation will worsen their health care, cost them more personally and add significantly to the national deficit. Never in our experience as pollsters can we recall such self-deluding misconstruction of survey data.

We The People do not want what’s coming out of Congress. Yet Congress still demands that We The People swallow what they’re shoving down our throats. Why?

Second, the country is moving away from big government, with distrust growing more generally toward the role of government in our lives. Scott Rasmussen asked last month whose decisions people feared more in health care: that of the federal government or of insurance companies. By 51 percent to 39 percent, respondents feared the decisions of federal government more. This is astounding given the generally negative perception of insurance companies.

CNN found last month that 56 percent of Americans believe that the government has become so powerful it constitutes an immediate threat to the freedom and rights of citizens. When only 21 percent of Americans say that Washington operates with the consent of the governed, as was also reported last month, we face an alarming crisis.

Health care is no longer a debate about the merits of specific initiatives. Since the spectacle of Christmas dealmaking to ensure passage of the Senate bill, the issue, in voters’ minds, has become less about health care than about the government and a political majority that will neither hear nor heed the will of the people.

Voters are hardly enthralled with the GOP, but the Democrats are pursuing policies that are out of step with the way ordinary Americans think and feel about politics and government. Barring some change of approach, they will be punished severely at the polls.

This country was founded on a concept of a small limited central government. Over the last 100 years we have allowed the government to slowly grow year after year, and not we are faced with an out-of-control Godzilla. Enough is enough. It’s the fault of the people for letting this happen, and today we are faced with a great battle to wrestle control out of Washington and back to We The People.

health care, Democrat, health-care, big government, We The People

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More Höpenchange, via Rasmussen:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 24% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -18.

Thirty-seven percent (37%) give the President good or excellent marks for handling the economy while 47% say he’s done a poor job in this area.

Twenty-five percent (25%) say the U.S. is generally heading in the right direction.

Fifty-seven percent (57%) believe that passage of the proposed health care legislation will hurt the economy. Just 25% believe it will help. Forty-two percent (42%) favor the President’s health care plan while 53% are opposed. Fifty-five percent (55%) say that Congress should scrap the current health care legislation and start over.

So why is Congress still trying to ram this hideous piece of legislation down our throats?

Rasmussen, Obama, health care

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Atlanta Center for Disease Control
February 8, 2010
Reuters, CNN Wire Services

New Disease Discovered and Classified: ‘Gonorrhea Lectim’

The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of this old disease. The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim (pronounced “Gonna re-elect ‘em”).

The disease is contracted through dangerous and high risk behavior involving putting your cranium up your rectum. Many victims contracted it in 2008 … but now most people after having been infected for the past 1-2 years are starting to realize how destructive this sickness is.

It’s curable with a new procedure just coming on the market called Vo-tem-out! You take the first dose/step in 2010 and the second dosage in 2012 and simply don’t engage in such behavior again, otherwise it could become permanent and eventually wipe out all life as we know it.

Several states are already on top of this like Virginia and New Jersey, and apparently now Massachusetts with many more seeing the writing on the wall.

Gonorrhea Lectim

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From National Review Online:

According to the most recent Fortune 500 rankings, health insurers are not even among the top-30 United States industries in profit-margin. Health insurers rank 35th, with a profit-margin of just 2.2 percent — less than one-fifth the profit-margin of railroads. None of the ten largest American health insurers made profits of more than 4.5 percent, and two of them lost money. Health insurers’ collective profit-margin is less than one-eighth that of drug companies and less than one-seventh that of companies that sell medical products or equipment. It’s also less than that of medical facilities. Yet when was the last time you heard President Obama rail against greedy hospitals?

But … but … but didn’t King Obama spend yesterday launching a campaign to vilify insurance companies?

The combined profits of America’s ten largest health insurers are $8.3 billion. That’s less than two-thirds of the profits of Wal-Mart alone, less than half of the profits of General Electric alone, and less than one-seventh of what Medicare loses each year to fraud. Health insurers collectively have one-eighth the profit-margin of McDonald’s or Coke, one-ninth that of eBay, and one-fifteenth that of Merck.

Why don’t these much more profitable companies or industries need to be taken over by the federal government? Why don’t they need to be subjected to something like President Obama’s proposed Health Insurance Rate Authority, which would be run by the same U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that already loses $60 billion of taxpayer money to Medicare fraud each year?

This has nothing to do with healthcare. This has nothing to do with making Americans lives easier or more healthy. This is government intrusion into the lives of We The People. In 1776 the people revolted against King George for far less that what Obama is attempting.

health insurers, Obama, federal government, Health Insurance, healthcare

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From those great folks at Cato:

1. Additional federal spending transfers resources from the more productive private sector to the less productive public sector of the economy.
2. As federal spending rises, it creates pressure to raise taxes now and in the future.
3. Much federal spending is wasteful and many federal programs are mismanaged.
4. Federal programs often benefit special interest groups while harming the broader interests of the general public.
5. Many federal programs cause active damage to society, in addition to the damage caused by the higher taxes needed to fund them.
6. The expansion of the federal government in recent decades runs counter to the American tradition of federalism.

federal spending, private sector, tax, federal program, special interest group

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Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. – Woodrow Wilson

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From CNN:

A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.

Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government’s become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.

According to CNN poll numbers released Sunday, Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken.

This poll simply demonstrates something I’ve been saying for awhile now. The current federal government is dangerous to our Constitutional Republic, is dangerous to the US Constitution, is dangerous to the Rugged Individualism that founded this country, is dangerous to both the letter and the spirit of the words of our Framers and Founders.

Storm clouds are brewing.

American, federal government, freedom

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The “Three Percenters“:

During the American Revolution, the active forces in the field against the King’s tyranny never amounted to more than 3% of the colonists. They were in turn actively supported by perhaps 10% of the population. In addition to these revolutionaries were perhaps another 20% who favored their cause but did little or nothing to support it. Another one-third of the population sided with the King (by the end of the war there were actually more Americans fighting FOR the King than there were in the field against him) and the final third took no side, blew with the wind and took what came.

“one-third of the population sided with the King” – today’s Democrats.

“one third took no side, blew with the wind and took what came” – today’s Republicans.

“20% who favored their cause but did little or nothing to support it” – today’s Libertarians.

“10% providing active support” – today’s Tea Party movement.

“3% active against the tyranny” – we know who we are.

The narrowest definition is that Three Percenters are hard-line gun owners who are done backing up and will not comply with more infringements of their right to bear arms. A broader definition would be that they are hard-line Americans who are done backing up and will not comply with further infringement of any of their rights.

This is not Right versus Left, or Conservative versus Liberal, or Republican versus Democrat, or Capitalist versus Socialist. This is Rugged Free Individual Liberty versus a Too-Powerful Too-Intrusive Nanny State Imperial Federal Government … the very government this country’s founders escaped from and rebelled against.

There comes a time in every person’s life when they must make a choice. Stand, or kowtow. Beg for scraps from the king’s table, or grow your own food. Give blessings for your Creator, or give blessings for your elected/selected bureaucrat. Read the writings of Thomas Jefferson, or read the writings of Karl Marx.

We will not disarm.

You cannot convince us.

You cannot intimidate us.

You can try to kill us, if you think you can.

But remember, we’ll shoot back.

And we are not going away.

Your move.

American Revolution, 3%, Three Percenter, Conservative, Liberal, Republican, Democrat, Socialist

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Via MyFOX Atlanta:

A Decatur homeowner will not be charged for shooting an intruder Wednesday morning. DeKalb County police said 40-year-old Dexter Tucker was justified in shooting a 17-year-old who broke into his home.

Tucker said he had run the scenario of an intruder in his mind many times before, but he never thought it would actually happen.

Kudos to Mr. Tucker for running the scenario in his mind –before– such an event ever happened. Have any of you ever done the same?

Tucker said he was asleep when he heard knocking at the front door. The Decatur man said he peered through the shades but didn’t answer the door.

“Then he started beating on the door,” Tucker recalled.

Tucker said he saw a young man run to the back door and that’s when he grabbed his gun.

“I couldn’t believe he was kicking in my door and it took him like four kicks to get in so by the time he got in I was ready for him,” Tucker said.

Tucker said he shot the intruder three times, striking him once in the thigh. The homeowner said he then saw another young man running away.

What would you have done? What good would it do for you to have a phone in your hand and the 911 operator on the line when an intruder is in your home with a gun pointed at your head? This is one of the many instances where the local law enforcement is equipped –not– to protect you, but only to investigate the crime after it happens … including identifying your dead body.

From the comments to this story:

Give this guy a medal. Maybe if enough of these worthless punks are destroyed they will get the idea and quit acting like animals (with apologies to the animals for comparing them to these scum).

Would like to see EVERY homeowner be licensed to have a weapon in their home.

Amen, brother. There is a Taurus PT-1911 chambered in .45ACP strapped to my right hip as I type this post.

Decatur, intruder, DeKalb County, Dexter Tucker, gun

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Says the UK Times Online:

For the rest of us, however, it was mainly an opportunity to see how many conciliatory-looking poses Obama could strike while listening to his Republican opponents explain why the entire first year of his administration has been a gigantic waste of time, and why the telephone directory-sized health Bills produced by both the Democrat-controlled House and Senate should be fed into a shredder the size of Connecticut, before they . . . well, no one seems to know exactly what these vast pieces of legislation would do.

It’s a damn shame that it takes a journalist from another country to tell the people of the US the truth.

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Via FOX News:

President Barack Obama strongly signaled that Democrats will move forward on a health care overhaul with or without Republicans, preparing his party for a fight whose political outcome will rest with voters in November.

Delivering his closing argument at a 7-1/2-hour televised policy marathon Thursday, Obama told Republicans he welcomes their ideas — even ones Democrats don’t like — but they must fit into his framework for a broad health care remake that would cover tens of millions of uninsured Americans.

It’s a gamble for Obama and his party, and it’s far from certain that Democratic congressional leaders can rally their members to muscle a bill through on their own. At stake are Democrats’ political fortunes in the midterm elections and the fate of Obama’s domestic agenda pitted against emboldened Republicans.

“The truth of the matter is that politically speaking, there may not be any reason for Republicans to want to do anything,” Obama said, summing up. “I don’t need a poll to know that most Republican voters are opposed to this bill and might be opposed to the kind of compromise we could craft.

“And if we can’t,” he added, “I think we’ve got to go ahead and some make decisions, and then that’s what elections are for. ”

Obama: The Audacity Of Socialism

Obama knows what the polls are saying, that the majority of Americans do not want this debacle of more regulations and higher taxes. Yet Obama is determined to shove this down our throats no matter what we want. “That’s what elections are for,” says King Obama, meaning if we really don’t like it then we can try to vote him and his buddies out of office in November.

Why would Obama do such a thing? First, he really believes he is smarter than the rest of us. He considers himself a higher being. He believes it when the media refers to him as “The One”.

Second, he has made this the single goal of his 1st term, and if it doesn’t pass then he considers himself to be a failure, even though many of us already consider him a failure.

Third, he’s a Socialist. He genuinely believes that government should take care of all problems, real or imagined, cradle to grave, of us citizens. He believes it is the role, and the goal, of government to get as involved as possible in the minute details of every American’s life. He wants America to become a Nanny State (like Britain is quickly becoming). He is part of the National Elite, while the rest of us are Lowly Peasants. He believes it’s his calling to nurse us at the teat of Mother Government.

Obama certainly drew a line in the sand yesterday. But I don’t know if he understands exactly how big that line might become.

Obama, Democrat, health care, Republican, Socialism, American, Socialist, Nanny State

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Doug Van Gorder, in the Boston Globe, says:

… as a progressive, I would sooner lay my child to rest than succumb to the belief that the use of a gun for self-defense is somehow not in itself a gun crime.

So Mr. Gorder, a high school math teacher, would not use a gun to prevent the harm or death of his child even if it was used purely for self-defense. I can only assume that he would have the same reservations in using any commonly-available weapon, like knife or club, unless he believes guns are manufactured evil.

As my children already know, and as I am teaching my grandchildren, I will gladly use whatever tools I have available … including my daily carried firearms … prevent the harm or death of my children.

I’m just so “un-progressive” that way, I guess.

Doug Van Gorder, progressive, self-defense, gun

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